Caoimhe’s first time

Since we’d missed National Burrito Day, a group of us decided that, before our trip to the pub for a few drinks, we’d stop by Tolteca and pick up a burrito for dinner yesterday. Tolteca had been on our minds because of the free burritos the day before, but we knew that the queue would be much more manageable yesterday evening.

The offering from Tolteca

So five of us went for burritos in Tolteca, and it was the first time that Caoimhe had a burrito – we were certainly hoping that she’d enjoy it too! She is a picky girl, in her own words, so she was worried that she’d be letting us down if she didn’t enjoy her burrito… But I’ll come back to her opinion on burritos later on.

The staff in Tolteca seemed to be in a great mood when we got there – I’m amazed, because I’d have been exhausted and cranky after the day they’d had on Thursday. According to their Twitter account, Tolteca were making 72 burritos ever twenty minutes for National Burrito Day – that’s almost 1300 free burritos that they gave away between 1pm and 7pm!

We had a laugh with the staff about how busy National Burrito Day was for them – we told them that the queue was too big, so we decided to be paying customers instead. They certainly didn’t mind that, and I think that they put some extra effort into our burritos for that.

One of the things that I really like about Tolteca is their free refills policy on drinks – they give their customers a cup, which we can fill from their soda machine. That said, maybe it’s not such a good idea to let customers get their own drinks; I stopped paying attention for a second, and accidentally poured Club Orange all over my hands (I wasn’t even drinking Club Orange)!

OK, I’ll get to the burrito. Tolteca do a student deal, for €5, which gets their customers a burrito and a drink. On my burrito I got white rice, pinto beans, stir fried vegetables, Carnitas (pork), pico de gallo, sour cream and cheese. The salsa that I went for was the lightning chipotle salsa – their 4-chilli rated salsa.

The napkins that Jen was so pleased with

As with the last time that I ate in Tolteca, the burritos were presented very well; perfectly wrapped in foil, and placed in the red plastic baskets. Jen was quite impressed with their napkins, which are 100% recycled, although Niamh reckons that this didn’t make up for the size of the receipts – she reckons that they’re a waste of paper! OK, now I’ll get to how the burrito was:

• My first bite of burrito was fantastic – there was a solid crunch of vegetables, with a mouthful of every ingredient. The distribution was almost perfect, from the beginning, and it didn’t change until the last bite, which was a mouthful of salsa and tortilla. It was quite moist, but managed not to be soggy, for the most part, which meant that the burrito held together well despite not having been toasted. It was only in the last few bites that the burrito became soggy and fell apart, and this is the point that I made a mess of myself with the burrito. Still, in terms of consistency, this was a pretty good burrito (8/10)
• For €5, this was a good sized burrito. It was quite round, and not too short at all. The ingredients didn’t compress all that much as I ate it, and I was quite full afterwards. Admittedly, I wasn’t all that hungry going in, but this was certainly a bigger burrito than one would need for lunch. I reckon that this particular burrito fits between the perfect size for lunch and dinner. (8/10)
• The pork was absolutely lovely, and that is probably the second thing I noticed about the burrito (after the great crunch in the first bite!). I chose it because it looked so good in the contained – shredded perfectly, moist. It tasted as good as it looked, and was very succulent and tender. It was clearly some good quality meat, and I was very glad that I chose it. The only problem I’d have with it is that it was a bit cold, and they didn’t drain enough of the water off of it. (9/10)
• The salsa was good – it was quite hot and a little bit smoky. It tasted kind of like habanero salsa, rather than chipotle salsa. Honestly, I think that without the sour cream in my burrito, I wouldn’t have been able to deal with how hot it was – at one point it was so hot that it overpowered the rest of the flavours in my burrito. That said, I’d recommend this to anybody who enjoys a reasonably good, hot salsa (7/10)
• In terms of the remaining ingredients, I quite enjoyed them. The vegetables and the pico de gallo were clearly fresh and were made very well. I’d have been surprised if they hadn’t been fresh, though, to be honest – I’d imagine that they had very little left after National Burrito Day! This is the first time in a while that I haven’t had to complain about the rice being dry – Tolteca are doing something right in their storage process. The rice also had a good coriander flavour off of it – not so strong as to be overpowering, but just enough to notice it. The pinto beans, in my opinion, were undercooked – they were quite hard and tough, the whole way through. It’s just as well that I only asked for a small scoop of beans -this would have been much more disappointing had there been more beans in the burrito. I thought that there wasn’t enough cheese in the burrito, either, but the cheese isn’t the most important ingredient, so I’ll survive without it. (8/10)

Some good ingredient distribution, I think you’ll agree

You’ll note that Tolteca have upped their score by quite a bit since the last time I ate there – this was an incredibly enjoyable burrito. My friends agreed too, that Tolteca were after becoming a serious contender for burritos – and with a score of 40/50, that should be clear to you too.

And now I’ll get back to Caoimhe’s opinion on her first ever burrito. She says that she enjoyed it, although she was too full to finish it. It’s just as well we had S-Dawg there to do the honours for her! So even though she was worried that she’d be too picky for a burrito, she seems happy with our decision to bring her out for burritos. At least, here’s hoping that she wasn’t just being polite around the rest of us, anyway!